1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a media converter having an integrated local information transmission function and a fault alarm signal transmission system that enable the transmission of local information with matching media converters to be performed by using a frequency outside the data signal communication frequency band or by controlling the sending of transmission error signals.
2. Description of the Related Art
A media converter converts an Ethernet signal in 10 BASE-T or 100 BASE-TX formats, which are IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.3 standards, that use twist pair cable into a signal that corresponds to a 100 BASE-FX format Ethernet that uses optical fiber. In many cases, a media converter is installed at both the subscriber's premises and the station premises and these are used by being matched to each other via a local area network (referred to below as a LAN). In a case such as this, the operating state, for example, the state of the link, whether the power is on or off, or the like of the media converter on the subscriber's side is monitored by the media converter on the station side. When the station media converter is used to monitor the operating state of the subscriber's media converter, an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) unit used for network management is mounted in the subscriber's media converter and the SNMP management device installed at the station side directly monitors the subscriber's media converter via the LAN.
However, in this type of system of the related art in which the operating state of the subscriber's media converter is monitored using an SNMP unit, even when there is only a small amount of local information (here, the local information includes control signals, status information, and interference information including at least one of twist pair cable abnormality information and power source abnormality information) to be transmitted, because the SNMP unit is required on the subscriber's side, the problem has existed that the structure of the device is made more complicated and it has proved difficult hitherto to simplify the structure. In addition, the problem has existed that it has been necessary for an IP (Internet Protocol) address to be allocated to all of the subscriber media converters in which an SNMP unit has been mounted thus causing the management to become extremely complex.